Last season, the Los Angeles Lakers ranked in the bottom-7 in the NBA in 3-pointers made, attempted and 3-point percentage. Even though the team is centered around LeBron James and Anthony Davis attacking the rim, the lack of perimeter shooting in an increasingly 3-point heavy league has limited the effectiveness of the offense.
This is why the Lakers’ 3-point shooting has stood out this preseason. So far in two games, the Lakers have knocked down 37.6% of their 93 3-point attempts. That percentage would’ve ranked seventh in the league last year, but the volume is noticeable as well and is something that has been an emphasis of the Lakers overall.
Davis admitted as much following the Lakers’ preseason win over the Nets in which they took 55 shots from deep. The star big man believes that the team’s shots came in rhythm but they just want to be confident in their shooting overall, via Spectrum SportsNet:
“We talked about getting more threes up. Obviously its been a point of emphasis in the way the league has shifted too, just a lot of threes. But it all came in rhythm you know, swing, swings or guys are going under pick-and-rolls or guys are shooting the gap in certain actions and things like that. We just wanna be confident in our shots and let it fly.”
LeBron also made note of the Lakers simply having more capable perimeter shooters on the roster overall and if teams are going to play them a certain way, they want to make them pay:
“We have better shooting this year. We have a lot of guys that shot the ball extremely well from the 3-point line last year. Taurean [Prince], Gabe [Vincent] and obviously Rui ended the year shooting extremely well. D-Lo shoots it, AR shoots it, and myself and AD we’ll sprinkle in as well. Obviously it starts with putting pressure on them and still getting to the free throw line, that starts with myself and AD. But when teams go under our pick-and-rolls or teams disrespect us from the perimeter we have enough shooting that we believe we can go up there and knock ’em down with confidence and with a high clip.
“But it’s still a work in progress, it’s just one game. I think the way Brooklyn played us tonight they urged us to shoot a lot of shots. They went under a lot of our pick-and-rolls, went under a lot of our pin-downs and things of that nature so Coach said if teams are gonna play us like that we just go up and just knock em down it’s stuff we’ve been working on. But we know throughout the course of the game if there’s four, five, six possessions where you’re shooting jump shots and you’re not making them we gotta try to put some pressure on the rim, which we know we can do that as well. We understand that.”
Make no mistake, the Lakers’ strength remains attacking the basket and getting to the line with LeBron, Davis and Austin Reaves. But better 3-point shooting just opens up the lane for those drives and makes the Lakers offense basically unstoppable. They can’t afford to fall in love with the perimeter, but the Lakers are certainly more capable this year of beating teams from deep.
Lakers’ Jarred Vanderbilt, Cam Reddish considered day-to-day
The Lakers picked up their first preseason win without a pair of players who are important to the rotation. Jarred Vanderbilt sat out with a sore heel while Cam Reddish is dealing with an ankle issue, but both are considered just day-to-day.
Head coach Darvin Ham provided updates on both, simply saying the team was being precautionary with it being so early in the year overall, but neither is considered a serious injury.
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